Mudeford privacy row as former Amazon seller challenges neighbour’s balcony

20 August 2026

A millionaire Amazon seller is locked in a privacy fight over a balcony barely big enough for a chair.

Michele Venton and her husband Dan live in a home they rebuilt two years ago on Mudeford. In 2019 she sold her GirlZone business, which sold toys, crafts, beauty kits and related products aimed at girls mainly through Amazon, for several million pounds. She is now asking Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council to refuse a variation of plans for the neighbouring chalet bungalow.

Retired software engineer Ian Bray, 78, and his wife Melanie live on Foxwood Avenue, a street within the wider Mudeford area. Six years ago they gained permission for a Juliet balcony. That approval was for a protective railing set flush with the wall in front of inward-opening French doors, with no platform for standing or sitting outside.

What was built is a small platform on top of a ground-floor extension. The doors open outwards, creating a usable area of about one square metre roughly ten metres from the Ventons’ boundary. From there a person can stand and look into the main seating area of their rear garden and towards bedroom windows.

Venton said the structure is “an actual balcony and that isn’t what he has planning permission for.” She added that a true Juliet balcony allows only a fleeting view, whereas the platform permits someone to remain outside and look down for sustained periods. Neighbour Natalie Crake has raised similar concerns about overlooking of her own garden seating.

Bray maintains the difference is negligible and resulted from an architect’s error on the drawings that neither he nor two building inspectors spotted. A planning officer who first visited thought the structure looked fine but later required a formal variation application. He has said he will appeal if the variation is refused and notes that the Ventons’ own house creates mutual overlooking.

The live application is P/26/02937/CONDR. It seeks to vary condition 2 of planning permission 8/23/0257/HOU so the French doors can open outwards and the size of the Juliet balcony can be altered. The application is currently under consideration.

The outcome will decide whether the existing platform can stay or whether the doors and guarding must be returned to the original approved design.